Everything in Its Place

Rook did not offer tea. He offered a chair, and then a long look at the strip light above his desk, as if it were in the room to be reasoned with. His office was on the first floor of the station, with a window onto the car park and a framed photograph of a lifeboat. It smelled of a very large, very old cigar that nobody had smoked there in a decade.

“I’ve had the Superintendent’s office on the phone,” he said. “Not the Superintendent. His office. It’s a different animal; they never say anything you can quote.” He turned a pencil end over end. “They’d be more comfortable going into Wednesday with a name in the file. Two have been put to me.”

“Rudd,” you said.

“Because he said it in the paper. And Mrs Crane.” He did not enjoy saying it. “Because she’s the heir, and she won’t sign the Harborline papers, and because someone saw a lamp on the quay before midnight.” He tapped the pencil on the blotter. “A lamp is nothing. But it’s a thing a man can write down.”

“Which would you rather?”

“Neither,” said Rook. He looked at the photograph of the lifeboat. “But I’ve been in this job long enough to know that you can’t simply refuse to give a town a name. It goes on to the next person and takes the one it finds. If it’s to be Rudd, I can at least see that he’s fed.”